Alice Can Fix It

"Grandmother, look at this
cute screw driver."

Bonnie gave me the idea of having a repair shop for Alice. She is anxious to use tools and now she has her own open air tent. We have been using it as a place to eat our ice cream in the rain – kind of fun to sit in the tent and have the rain pouring from the sides, and us being dry while we eat our afternoon snacks in the rain.

"Alice's new garage-sale tent."

In fact we got a beautiful sun shower in the middle of the storm, the rays of the sun beating down and the rain also falling on us.

At any rate, I spent the day taking the clover and the Douglas aster out of the ground under the tent so that I don’t trip on the weeds as we work.

"Will be back in 10 minutes."

"I love this icecream and
 my new wizard Cape."

"Best eaten by peeling
back the wrapper."

"Can you see my new purple
beach umbrella behind me?"

Now Catherine told me that in Montreal there is a business where the man offers to fix anything. He charges $100 just to look at whatever it is that a person wants fixed and then he asks, “Do you really want this fixed for the price I am going to charge you.”

That statement helps him weed out the customers who are more provident with their money than with the broken pieces of their lives. But he still has a healthy business, fixing for her a Fisher-Price music turntable that she had borrowed and returning it to her both clean and operational.

So Alice and I tightened the bolts on some picnic tables and chairs that I own. And then we took the articles to clean them up, just as the man in Catherine’s story did. We have a hose nearby with a nozzle that has a choices of 8 different settings.  I have been accidentally sprayed by all of them.

 We have quite the set up in our tent: some chairs for our customers and a table to work on. And we have access to all of the tools in the garage. The best plus is that Alice’s mother is good at this kind of thing and always available.

Tomorrow we are going to fix an old clock, I think by just putting in a battery. Betty was spinning the minute and hour hand today. I am hoping that the clock will still work when it finally gets its battery.

Arta